By Jim Bloch
Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival rolled into Pine Knob without gurneys or wheelchairs, celebrating the country legend’s vibrant 90th birthday year.
Nelson and his Family band headlined the Sept. 22 show. Bob Weir and the Wolf Brothers, plus the five-member Wolf Pack on cello, violin, trumpet, trombone and saxophone, held down the second slot. The Colorado-based jam band String Cheese Incident opened the evening with a hot 60-minute set that began at 5:55 p.m., hinting at early bedtimes for the aging musicians.
Nelson continued to defy his age. He strolled on stage unassisted and took his place on a stool in front of his four piece backing band.
Willie Nelson’s guitar Trigger.
“How y’all doin’?” Nelson called to the roar of the crowd. “We got Bob Weir over here on guitar.”
His signature bandana read “Pretend I never happened.”
Weir, who cofounded the Grateful Dead, played rhythm guitar with Nelson after finishing his own set.
Nelson reeled through a cache of his biggest hits, his voice tarnished from decades behind the mic, playing his battered guitar with authority, encouraging the crowd to sing along to favorites like “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”
Nelson may have been the oldest person at the concert. But the members of the other two bands were not far behind. Bob Weir, who was 16 when he teamed up with Jerry Garcia to form the Grateful Dead in 1965, is 75. His bassist, the Oak Park, MI native and president of Blue Note Records, Don Was is 71. The members of String Cheese Incident were the babies on the bill, headed by Bill Nershi, 62, who cofounded the band in 1993.
The audience for the sold-out show appeared to mirror the ages of the musicians, resplendent in their tie-dyes, Dead t-shirts and patchwork balloon pants. But the flower children of the Summer of Love were now more than a half-century older, flower seniors floating on clouds of legal reefer smoke. Nelson’s “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I’m Dead” provided the theme of the night. The cowboy hats and boots of Willie’s strictly country fans were in the minority.
Bob Weir at Pine Knob.
Nelson’s guitar, a Martin N-20 classical model with nylon strings, was older than a significant portion of the audience. He purchased it in 1969, the same year as Woodstock, after his Baldwin was stomped by a drunk fan. Dubbed Trigger, the guitar looked ready for Medicare, its finish blistered and scarred by years of strumming and more than a hundred autographs, including those of plenty of long-gone compatriots, such as Leon Russell, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Roger Miller. The musicians scratched their names into Trigger’s Sitka spruce top. Nelson’s powerful picking has gouged a hole in the guitar that runs from the bridge nearly to the sound hole.
Bassist Don Was is 71.
Weir shared primary vocal duties in the Dead with Garcia. He was the sole singer in the 10-piece Wolf Brothers/Pack ensemble, so the band had unmistakable echoes of the Dead. But the string and horn section added an orchestral, almost big band sound to its extended jams. That left the String Cheese Incident sounding more Dead-like than the band of the Dead’s co-founder.
Nelson sang his sad bluegrass ballad “Good-hearted Woman,”
“She’s a good-hearted woman in love with a good timin’ man,” sang Willie. ” He likes the bright lights and night-life and good timin’ friends/And when the party’s all over, she’ll welcome him back home again … She loves me in spite of my wicked incomprehensible ways.”
String Cheese Incident’s Bill Nershi.
Her predicament, of course, is created by Nelson’s love of the road.
Nelson sang a slightly speeded up version of his anthemic tune, as if he was running out of time, the full-throated audience singing along: “On the road again/Just can’t wait to get on the road again/The life I love is making music with my friends.”
On Friday night, he had 15,000of them.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
